


The Dismemberment

by yuutsuhime



Series: 東港 | Higashi-Minato [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Exchange Student, Gen, High School, Rural Japan, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-21
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2021-01-13 10:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21242852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuutsuhime/pseuds/yuutsuhime
Summary: Two high-school girls talk about their problematic parents in the days after a body is found dismembered in the woods near their rural hometown.





	The Dismemberment

In the morning the mist hung over the streets like the news of the dismemberment, and Mom was still drunk from the night before. She'd gotten home around three or four in the morning and choked on her vomit at five and then I'd gone back to bed at six so I could get up at seven to recycle the beer bottles and water Dad's old garden before school. I'd wanted to smash the glass bottles over her head one by one but instead I just held her hand and said it would be okay in the morning. I didn't tell her that it was already morning, or that it wasn't okay.

I made a cup ramen for breakfast because I was too tired to go down to the fish market and see Chef Takeshi, even though I knew he'd bellow _Good morning_ at me and show me the new self-portrait he got done in the big city for when he finally dies. Chef Takeshi joked about death and stupidity and gave Priya free food for being the first foreigner besides my Dad who ever lived in Higashiko. He asked how Dad was doing in Seattle and I said okay, because I hadn't called him in weeks; and I was okay too, down there at the perfectly unbalanced fourth table with the ratty old leather stool; the smell of sushi rice and deep-fried seafood mixing with the smell of work boots and calloused hands.

He also asked how my mother was and I wanted to say that I don't know where she is even though she sleeps at home, and that I cook for her now, but I could hear Priya waiting down at the train station. She waited very loudly. I told Chef Takeshi that I'd see him later even if it was at his funereal, and he replied that I could always see him in his portrait even if all the fish in the ocean rightfully had a taste of _him_ for a change.

That was yesterday morning, and I'd had twice as much sleep and more than noodles for breakfast, and the house didn't smell like cigarettes and vomit, and the trash bags full of limbs were still hiding in the mountains; the construction worker who found them was still on the train. Everyone took the scenic route now, like tourists, but they had good stories and good business to bring to the fish market.

"Jaya," Priya had said on the train back from school, "Let's be detectives! Oh my God, what if it's a _serial killer_!" She was very excited, and her eyes gleamed behind her glasses with an enthusiasm that meant she'd forgotten about the paper she had due in her English class. She was trying to learn both Japanese and English at once and she was going insane.

I met her at the train station eventually after making sure that Mom was still just sort of dead. I locked the door anyway in case the dismemberer came in with the fog while I was out. Couldn't be cleaning that up too.

* * *

I had heard about the dismemberment from Priya. I was eating a cup ramen at the time and the noodles turned into intestines for a split second and I spat broth onto the ground. It was probably no good to drink the broth anyway since cup noodles are basically just cardboard and sodium, but Priya and I had both decided to eat whatever the fuck we wanted to eat because we were the weird immigrant students who ate lunch under the school's stairs where they stored extra desks.

"Is that normal in Japan?" Priya had asked. She was a foreign exchange student this semester living with the old couple who ran the Seven-Eleven down in my backwater hometown on the last stop of the local line. It was mildly disconcerting that my hometown was slowly becoming a tourist destination, but I'd lived there long enough that people didn't assume I was an American tourist at all.

"No," I said. "There have been bear attacks though, and honestly I'm really fascinated by gore but wait until I'm done eating, please."

"They still haven't uploaded the photos online," Priya pouted. "They never release _anything_ because it's an _active investigation_ or whatever."

"Boo," I said. Priya had been open about her passion for online murder photo databases since I met her and I didn't want to scare away the only other not-all-the-way-Japanese person to ever live in Higashiko. It was just something we talked about, under the stairs at school; which was probably why we ate alone. We were the weird foreign kids, even though I was born in Kyoto and grew up in Higashiko before Dad decided to take a month off and then a year and then _Jaya, we have something important we need to tell you_ and then it was just packages from America and envelopes that smelled like him. Mom usually threw them out.

"They said the guts got thrown around everywhere," Priya said, her eyes gleaming behind her glasses. "The rest of the limbs were in trash bags so it was clearly a dismemberment done by a person!"

"Then I suppose you'd like to be next," I said. Then I sipped broth too quickly and burned my tongue.

"Come on, I'm not some sort of _freak_. What are you doing after school?"

"I'm probably gonna do calculus and yell at my Mom," I said.

"Is she smoking again," Priya said.

"She's always smoking," I said. "I could get us some if you want any; the problem is she's fucking smashed all the time because her boyfriend moved to Osaka and stopped being her boyfriend, and obviously this is my fault."

"Gross," said Priya. "I will _never_ smoke. Ever. My Mom would come all the way over from India just to lecture me in person. She said I can't smoke or drink or have sex with a boy. I forgot to call her last Sunday and she freaked out and called me like ten times. Ten! And then she assumed I didn't answer because I'm just trying to be _rebellious_ and oh, _now_ she understands what this Japan thing was all about."

Priya said that her parents were strict. I'd assumed they'd been murdered to death horribly in front of her, but that was just me being racist. Her mother was a social worker and her father was a lawyer and she assured me that they were horrible people.

I'd talked to Priya's mother on occasion, when we were hanging out in her rented room and she'd called and Priya had offhand mentioned that _I'm just sitting here with Jaya_, and her mother freaked out that _You're with a boy? An Indian boy?_ It was an awkward conversation. I'm not Indian or a boy; I just was blessed with a mildly culturally appropriative American father.

"My Mom came home drunk and threw up all night," I said. "That's why I look like shit. I realize I'm not coherent whatsoever."

"You were asleep in class," Priya said, narrowing her eyes. She got 98s on her calculus tests. "You're such a slacker."

"You got a 98 instead of a 100 on the last—"

"The question was a _trick_!"

"Well, that's what losers or whatever say. That one guy who wears a fedora outside of class beat you. You lost to a person who writes lemon fanfiction and vocaloid covers."

Priya sighs and changes the subject. "At least that means your mom's loud sex stopped?"

"No, that stopped earlier. I started making my own noises back at them but louder and more obnoxious and eventually they got too mad to continue. It was fucking glorious but then Mom hit me in the head and made me stop."

"That's what that was from?"

"What, you could tell?"

"Yeah," said Priya. "Look, the Hiranos are super nice, and they cook me dinner and they're really, _really_ interested in India and they don't hit me in the head _ever_. You know them too. Come over if you need it."

"I'm fighting a war, man. I'm not gonna just cop out of there. I mean sure she's a piece of shit but she's my _Mom_ for God's sake. I'm not gonna leave her on her own or wish for her to get serial killed or whatever."

There was an awkward silence and then Priya said, "Well, you know you." Then the bell rang and I threw away my trash and washed my chopsticks in the drinking fountain.


End file.
